“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” I mumble around the dart stick, “but I need to be on my way.”
The Racoccin sprite stops his ascent to the tangle of branches overhead. “The lad kain speak.”
“Not.” His trapped friend grunts.“Lad.”
“You got me. Now please. If you promise not—” I hiss as the wriggling male sinks his teeth into the fleshy meat between my thumb and index, shocking my fingers apart.
He shoots up and out. “Get her, you idiot! Get her!”
Furia prances backward, then forward. I shoot my bleeding hand down to his mane and latch on, then crank my neck back and blow the dart in the sprites’ direction, praying it’ll at least graze one of them, but my missile soars right past them.
I try blowing again, but no second dart lurks within the weapon. Furia jerks, and I think he’s been hit by a dart, until a dull whiz whispers past my ear. How? How did he know to move his body, and by extension, mine?
“Give that to me!” the green-eyed sprite roars, reloading.
I flick the piece of wood dangling between my lips at where they’re huddled. Unlike my dart, my stick clocks one of my accosters right in the head. Unfortunately, it clocks the one not holding the projectile launcher.
“Assaulting the king’s guards will cost you dearly, scazza.” As his friend rises, rubbing his forehead, he barks, “Inform Commander Dargento of—”
Black smoke coalesces around their bodies, cutting him off midsentence. My polenta lurches up my throat as I realize it isn’t the only thing the smoke has snipped.
I gawp at the halved sprite bodies lying on the slick ground in absolute horror, then blink back up at the smoke gathering into the shape of a crow. I raise a trembling palm to my mouth.
Santo Caldrone, Morrgot has just killed two innocent pixies. “What have you done? What have you done?” My tone is as frenzied as my stomach’s pitching.
What sort of monster am I abetting?
Before I can swing myself off the horse and get away from the murderous crow, Furia begins to canter. I debate throwing myself off when I’m slammed with a vision that steals the breath from my lungs.
My wrists are bound behind my back, and my chest is heaving with sobs as Silvius holds a steel blade to Nonna’s bobbing throat. Although the sky is a limpid blue, the ocean is dyed black and covered in floating chunks of pink serpent flesh.
I thump back into reality with such force that another strangled sob drops from my mouth. What the underworld was that? A snippet of my future had the sprites lived to tell on me?
I shudder as the sight of Nonna’s ghostly face and Minimus’s slaughtered body flash behind my lids. Although bile bastes my palate, resolve fills my veins, snuffing my lingering desire to forsake this mission.
I can only return to my robin-blue house once Dante sits on the throne, for only then will I have the backing and status to protect all those I love. Which isn’t to say I approve of Morrgot’s manner of intervention.
“You could’ve stunned them or knocked them out.” I hope my words will reach the crow, who is, once again, out of sight.
Nonna’s face flashes behind my lids, eyes pried so wide, her green irises bob amidst the white. Silvius’s fingers are wound through her black hair, and the steel is biting into her slender throat.“Her blood is on you, Signorina Rossi. All on you.”But her blood is on him. It flows in rivulets around his knuckles and penetrates into the fabric of his pristine white uniform.
“Stop,” I whimper.
Although I can barely make out Morrgot’s body against the pitch-blackness of the Racoccin woods, I don’t miss the golden gleam of his eyes that peer down at me, narrowed. As though he’s challenging me to complain again about his manner of dealing with the sprites.
Ishethe one planting these gruesome images inside my mind?
Does this homicidal bird hold such power?
Forty-Four
The stars fade and the sun cycles over us, and still, Furia gallops and Morrgot soars. The adrenaline of snaking through trees on horseback keeps me wide awake. Although my hands ache and my throat feels as dry as parchment, I don’t ease my grip on the reins to fish out my canteen.
We haven’t run into anyone since the sprites, which isn’t surprising considering the treacherousness and compactness of the Racoccin forest. I doubt anyone in their right mind would venture where we do. Not only is the land steep and uneven, but the light is scarce, made scarcer still by the tangle of branches and the canopy of leaves.
When dusk sets in, my sit bones are numb and my blisters have sprouted new blisters. Monteluce has always seemed far, but at the moment, it feels as though it lies in another kingdom altogether.
“Are we almost there?”
